Page 64 of The Darkest Half

Victor takes my hand, and we slip down the hall away from their prison.

Victor never answers Vonnegut.

“And the breeding program?” I ask once we are in the elevator again.

Victor takes me into an aggressive kiss and pushes me against the elevator wall. “No, I will not be shutting down the breeding program,” he says hotly onto my mouth.

He strips off my clothes, and I wrap my arms and legs around him, feeling him hard and full inside me.

I wonder if he meant something more by his answer than expected, but I never ask; I just let him have his way with me all the way up to the top floor again.

30

Victor

Six Months Later…

Many things have changed, not just in The Order but in our personal lives. A few years ago, I never would have imagined we would be here now. I was never entirely confident that we would successfully take down The Order, much less build it back up again and control it.

I did, however, expect to lose people in the process, no matter the outcome. It was no secret that Nora Kessler always intrigued me, and a part of me is frustrated that she is no longer with us. In the end, I suppose she was loyal to me, but it was her fault we could not trust her fully. It is a shame she could not be part of our future; she made an excellent operative and vital asset to our team. But she died doing what she loved, and I can only hope for the same when my time comes.

Fredrik Gustavsson was an inevitability. I never wanted to believe it, probably in the same way as Izabel. She and I both lost a friend.

Fredrik always had the potential in him to become a serial killer. It was only Seraphina Bragado and his love for her that kept him in line, who distracted him from his dark, ritualistic urges. Were it not for her guidance and love for him, Fredrik would have succumbed to those urges long ago. Again.

The thing Izabel does not know about Fredrik, however, is that he was a serial killer from the age of fifteen until he turned twenty-eight, and he became overwhelmed by that conscience of his and did not want to kill anymore. He kicked the habit, so to speak, and successfully stopped killing for several years. But it was difficult for him, the same way it is difficult for a drug addict to stop using drugs cold turkey. The withdrawal was debilitating for Fredrik. He often would lose himself, and I did my best to keep him in line. I gave him interrogation jobs on my missions and tried to understand and be a friend to him. He kept himself going by hunting and torturing criminals, or “people who deserved it,” in Fredrik’s words.

And then there was sex. It was Gustavsson’s other outlet, the one thing that helped distract him from his inherent need. Trade one addiction for another; it is what people with addictive personalities always do, and Fredrik was the reigning king.

But when he met Izabel, I thought perhaps she would be his moral savior. He loved her like a sister, and I saw a change in him when she entered his life that I had never seen before.

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be, no matter how much they loved and complimented each other.

Fredrik and Seraphina, that truly was meant to be. Despite Seraphina’s violent and unhinged mind, she was the more balanced of the two. Between them, Fredrik Gustavsson was the darkest half, not the other way around.

As far as The Order, a name change was inevitable. I remember the day clearly when I first daydreamed about leading The Order. I thought to myself how I never liked what they, whoever ‘they’ were, chose to call it in its infancy. The Order. Izabel did not like it, either. She said it was too simple, too commonly used. Boring even. On the other hand, I only cared to change it because it seemed appropriate, given how everything else about it had changed the moment I took the chair at the head of its table.

Today, it is officially known in the underground world as The New Order.

“What?” Izabel asked when I’d told her; eyebrows drawn inward stiffly. “That is all you could come up with?”

“It does not need a fancy, standout name, Izabel,” I told her in my defense. “We do not print out letterheads with a logo or even have our buildings named. It does not need anything more.”

“The New Order?” She shook her head with disapproval, and I was a little offended. “I thought you were really going to change it.” She threw her hands up in the air. “It’s still boring and overused.”

Despite her condemnation, The New Order remained.

She had been acting rather moody lately around that time, so I almost attributed her behavior to a pregnancy. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, and Izabel was not, in fact, pregnant, but just her usual, outspoken self. She had had herself sterilized some time ago and was not supposed to be able to get pregnant, but there have been rare cases where it has still happened, so the thought did cross my mind.

Izabel and I did finally do the most non-assassin thing ever and get legally married. It was a small ceremony with a Catholic priest, James Woodard, and a few other people closest to Izabel from her unit.

Neither of us is entirely sure why we felt the need to be married—or why a Catholic priest. We love each other, there is no question, but we do not live as everyday citizens in the outside world. We do not need a legal marriage regarding filing tax returns, qualifying for programs, or the plethora of legal situations married couples face.

But we tied the knot, so to speak. And while we are unsure why we did it, we do not regret it.

Three weeks after Izabel met with her unit for the first time, she left with them for Germany on two missions that will take quite some time. I have not seen her other than through a live feed on a cell phone screen.

“A few more months and I’ll be back,” she had told me the last time we spoke.

---